WATN: Pain still remains three decades later for family of stabbing victim

Thursday

Dec 26, 2013 at 3:33 PM

Thirty years later, the pain still remains for the mother of a woman who was stabbed to death in a motel robbery.

BY Christina McCuneIndependent staff writer

Elaine Robinson remembers 30 years ago watching in "stunned wonder" as her husband, two sons and their teenage friends continued a favorite Christmas tradition of making sauerkraut balls from scratch.

The Tuscarawas Township woman said it wasn't the sauerkraut balls that gave her a bit of comfort that first Christmas after her 24-year-old daughter was killed in a motel robbery in 1983. What pulled her out of the blackness that had consumed her since August of that year was the love shown by her husband, Tom, sons, David and Robert, and their friends in that simple act of carrying on a tradition Robinson used to enjoy with her daughter.

"I think it was the caring and sharing and loving that pulled me through," she said, during an interview last week.

Understandably, Robinson still has a difficult time talking about her daughter, Jody K. Robinson. When Elaine Robinson looks at her own 1952 graduation photo from North Canton High School, and her daughter's 1978 graduation photo from Washington High School, the resemblance is remarkable -- right down to the smile.

"After her death I was on a different level than anybody else in the world," she said.

Robinson has found some solace in writing. She calls her suitcase the "Samsonite cemetery." Letters have been laid to rest in the piece of luggage, but she continues to fill it with her writing that she won't let anyone else read.

A few of those letters have been shared along the way and she also has put together photo albums and scrapbooks of her children and grandchildren.

"And, in the very quiet, dim, cool times of my life I swear I can hear the whisper and gentle fluttering of angel wings," Robinson wrote in one of her letters after her daughter's death.

This month, Robinson submitted a letter to The Independent about her memory of making sauerkraut balls. It's a copy of the same letter she composed on her typewriter and had submitted to newspaper in the 1980s. This time, she submitted the copy along with a small handwritten note: "Editor: Perhaps you'd like to print this. After all these years the pain is still great."

AUG. 10, 1983 TRAGEDY

The Robinsons have been married since 1956. Tom Robinson was a builder and had his own business. Elaine Robinson helped him as an administrative assistant. In 1982, Elaine Robinson had become the first female president of the board of trustees of the YMCA in Massillon.

Jody Robinson had filled in for someone else's shift the morning she was killed, her mother said. She was the night auditor at the Massillon Holiday Inn, 2050 Lincoln Way E. Robinson had worked at the motel for two years and had worked her way up to the auditor's job, her mother said. The motel was located where the Giant Eagle GetGo gas station is now.

According to stories published in what was then The Evening Independent, Jody Robinson was working alone that night. She was found behind the front desk at 3:31 a.m. Aug. 10, 1983, by the motel's assistant manager. She had been stabbed at least three times. A suspect was spotted leaving the scene, and $200 was taken, the newspaper reported.

"One wound was to a hand, as though she tried to protect herself from the attack," according to the newspaper story. "Another wound was a glancing-type blow off the side of the forehead and the fatal wound was struck in the center of the chest."

The motel's assistant manager was getting out of his car in the parking lot when he saw a man walking away swiftly, according to the newspaper report. Patrolman Donald Witmer was the first on the scene and had arrived within seconds. She was dead.

Witmer, who retired in 2012 as a lieutenant after 37 years on the Massillon Police force, remembers that morning vividly. Witmer had the midnight shift for close to 30 years, he said. When the call came in, he happened to be driving along Lincoln Way near the motel.

"At that time I was 20 feet from the driveway," he said. "I slammed the brakes and spun the wheel and pulled in to the Holiday Inn. I jumped out and ran in."

He said he even remembers placing his left hand on the counter so he could jump over it to get to Robinson. He said he remembers calling the fire department. Other officers arrived and police began searching for the suspect.

"Stunned Holiday Inn employees, their eyes burning red with tears, spoke in quivering whispers of the robbery-murder and the young victim," the Aug. 10, 1983 story read.

Massillon Police got warrants and began searching for Brian Lorenzo Butler, who was 16 at the time. The juvenile was found in October 1983 in Toledo where he was caught trying to enlist in the military under another name, according to a story in The Evening Independent.

Detectives Capt. Richard Bryan and Tom Jackson went to Toledo to track him down with the assistance of the Toledo police and the FBI, the newspaper reported. Massillon Police Chief Fred Kirkbride credited the investigative work of Jackson and patrolman William Poole in "cracking the case so swiftly," an Oct. 14, 1983 newspaper story read.

Butler apparently tried to get some of Robinson's money from her bank account before he fled the city, the October 1983 story read, because Robinson's bank card was found in an ATM the evening after she was killed. Butler had moved to Massillon a few months earlier from Cincinnati.

Butler was tried as a juvenile, both Elaine Robinson and Lt. Donald Witmer said. Robinson said Butler served less than three years in Columbus and was released. She doesn't know what has since happened to him, she said.

IN HER MEMORY

Months after Robinson's death, a fitness center in the Massillon YMCA was dedicated in her name. The Jody K. Robinson Memorial Fitness Center has since been renovated and updated.

"She knew how I wanted that exercise center," Robinson said.

She said her daughter had a ceramic tiger bank that she would put money in to go toward the exercise center.

"After her death, the community responded," Robinson said. "In no time at all there was a couple hundred thousand in that account (for the fitness center)."

Elaine Robinson had been a state racquetball champion and a dancer, she said. Her daughter had never been athletic but she was talented with her hands like her father.

"She could knit and crochet and make beautiful things," Robinson said.

Tom Robinson retired in 1996 but he still continues to make woodcrafts. The couple has four grandchildren.

Years later, Elaine Robinson wrote a follow-up letter to her Christmas letter that had been published in the newspaper:

"Letter to the Editor: Some time ago you printed a letter I wrote of a favorite Christmas memory. In this letter I wrote of teenagers who came to me with love and caring in my greatest time of need. They were sporting earrings, torn jeans, and untied shoelaces. These teenagers did not place stumbling blocks in my path but carefully placed stepping stones.

"These young men and women are today married and have families of their own. They are treasures who are witty and intelligent and do not use four-letter words at the rate of three or four per minute.

"One is a lawyer with honesty and great integrity. One is a business man who does not cheat his customers or pollute the environment. One is a computer whiz. One has become a spiritual leader who is not a child molester or a money-grubbing charlatan. All have become wonderful parents.

"I've discovered these young men and women are not seedy, cynical, or vulgar as often is reflected in the media or movies. They are our great treasures and they will evolve; and, their light shines from within.